IGN.com Reviews

It’s not every day, or every year for that matter, that a website’s reviews section revamp get’s so much coverage and evident importance from an international community. But we are talking about IGN.com, the leading online channel for anything entertainment, particularly anything video game related.

Last night IGN premiered their new Reviews format with the an extended review of the game Borderlands 2. With more than half a million followers on Twitter and nearly a million on Facebook (and who knows how many users worldwide), something like this becomes a major event. To IGN and especially their readers, this is a big deal, and rightly so. It’s all about presentation and interaction with the public, isn’t it? And with such a vibrantly active website community, that’s not a small thing.

About the design: in fitting IGN tradition, it looks massive! The new format uses a responsive design that fits itself and the text size to your screen sizes. So much so, that when scaling the browser window to full widescreen size, you get your neighbors from across the street to join in reading what looks like a whopping 24pt size! Ok, this might need some tweeking, but it just goes to show the spirit behind the design.

The majority of the typography uses ARS Maquette Web with some help from FF DIN Round. The Header/Titles & Scores are huge but fitting. The red and black colors contrast well with the generous white space. The text is, as I said, set large and very readable with nice layout details the further you scroll down the page. Overall the new page looks striking indeed. Does this mean there are more changes ahead to the IGN website? I hope so, as large chunk of it can look kind of generic and stale by now.

It is obvious that the new Reviews format had a clear idea in mind — presumably a grander, more modern product presentation, clarity and attention to the essentials, while opening a broader community interaction. Judging by the response and 1550 comments so far, I’d say they’ve nailed it!

More details and background info about the new format design can be found here.